Post
by Strange Brew
Summary: A couple of letters and little more. Set in the term after Pigeon Post. Nancy's in trouble. John is getting rather het up.


**Post**

The first days back at school were always the worst. Damp beds, cold water, a new set of mistresses to loathe her. Nancy, muddy in hockey boots and Aertex shirt, grinned to herself as she sat at a desk in detention. Three days back and in trouble already. A new record, she thought.

It was Michaelmas term, so they'd been playing hockey. Nancy took what might be politely termed a 'loose approach' to the game. Get the ball in the net – that was the aim. Rules and whistles seemed so… _arbitrary_. So she'd received the ball by her own goal, run with it the length of the pitch, and given it an almighty _thok_ into the opposition's net. The goalkeeper, incensed for some reason, had picked the ball out of the net and hurled it with some spirit back at Nancy, who'd thrown her stick at it wildly…

… 'You're not supposed to do that, Ruth,' Nancy's form prefect had said wearily, as blood was sponged from the mouth of the opposition's central midfielder. Nancy had shrugged, and made a face at the goalkeeper. The games mistress had had brandished a red card at Nancy, shown a yellow to the goalkeeper, and given them both detention. End of period, end of game. Case closed.

_What a fuss about nothing, _Nancy thought now, as she absently drew pigeons on her sheet of French verbs. The goalkeeper, a stout girl called Gwen, was glaring at her from a desk on the other side of the room. Nancy made another face at her, and laughed.

'Silence,' said Miss Potts sharply, from the high desk.

Nancy tried once again to concentrate on her French verbs.

_Giminy, but I wish it was still summer_, she thought.

The memories of prospecting for gold on the hot fells of home suddenly threatened to overwhelm her. The soft _phieu-phieu_ of the pigeons in their basket, plump chests puffed, round yellow eyes staring placidly from small bobbing heads. The deep earthy smell of their hemp seed. The sudden cold pools of shadows cast on the track to Tyson's farm on those blisteringly hot mornings. Heat haze shimmering over the fells and screes of High Topps. Kanchenjunga huge and sharp against the dark burning blue of the summer sky. The hum and buzz of slow bees round the pump in Tyson's farm yard. Dry grass beneath her sandshoes. Hard, cracked earth and grey, hot stone solid under her as she lay on the Great Wall. White sunlight flooding her tent in the mornings, her sister sleeping next to her. Sparks from the fire in the still, hot nights. Sharing a thermos of tea with John as they watched the charcoal pudding, the rest of the camp asleep. The long silences filled only with the low roar of the pudding and the crackle of the camp fire and the creak of crickets. The quiet companionship with John the night he'd fallen asleep and she'd found herself just watching him breathe… until she'd slept too, unforgivably, and let the charcoal almost burn. The terrible roar of the fire on the Topps, and the ridiculous way John had pushed her into the mine ahead of him as the fire swept closer, and the frightened quick breathing inside the mine as flames and smoke had engulfed the entrance.

She thought of John now. _Barbequed billygoats, I bet John wouldn't have got himself sent to detention after three days back at school_. Did they even play hockey at boys' schools? It was rugby, she supposed. She thought of him, sprinting past prop forwards in his rugby jersey, ball tucked under his arm and diving for a try or a goal or whatever it was they did, and then getting up and shaking hands with his team-mates and the opposition players… No, John would never be sent off. John would always play by the rules. Nancy grinned as she imagined John's reaction to her own on-field indiscretions. 'But you're meant to shoot from outside the circle,' he would say. 'I'm not even sure if defenders are _allowed_ to score goals. And you shouldn't really whirl your stick above your head.' 'Gummock,' she'd tell him, 'Who cares?' And he'd grin back at her and say, 'Of course. Sail's the thing.' And then they'd race _Swallow _and _Amazon_ and she'd jolly well win.

_Giminy, but I'm homesick_, she thought.

She stretched out her long legs under the desk and sighed. Miss Potts glared at her. Mud flaked off her hockey boots. A lone fly buzzed irritably in the window. Miss Potts' pen scratched angrily on paper. Gwen the stout goalkeeper seemed to be asleep. Nancy sighed loudly again. Miss Potts threw down her pen.

'Ruth Blackett,' she said, 'you are deliberately trying my patience. If you can't be silent for the rest of the hour then you'll be in detention again tomorrow afternoon.'

'Sorry, Miss Potts,' said Nancy.

She looked down at her page of French verbs. A fat pigeon stared back at her. In the corner, a skull grinned cheerfully. A little white-sailed dinghy tacked gaily between _vous êtes and ils sont_. She'd drawn a whole row of stick figures across her conjugations of _faire_, all semaphoring madly. Oh dear. Well, she was in trouble already. This wouldn't make much difference.

She pushed aside her defaced verbs, and fished a fresh bit of paper from her bag. Writing to boys who weren't family members was expressly forbidden, but she didn't think Miss Potts would notice. She'd see if she could get a stamp from Peggy, and then she'd nip out to the post-box after supper.

_Dear Captain John _[she began]

_I'm in detention already. I was sent off for doing something wrong in hockey and then knocking someone's tooth out. It was an accident, of course, but they're being tremendous gummocks about it. How is your school? Do you score tries in rugby, or goals? Captain Flint has written to me and told me about the progress at the mine. He is working with Timothy and Bob and he says they've got a good lot of copper out already. He said a lot about stinks as well which I didn't read but Dick will probably be interested. The armadillo hutch is being used as a boot cupboard now, which seems a bit of shame considering Peggy wrecked a perfectly good belt to build it. Natives can be jolly ungrateful sometimes. Are you and the Swallows coming up at Christmas again? No sailing, but we'll have an Antarctic expedition and I won't have mumps this time. We'll have another war and you and the Swallows will have to jolly well watch out for squalls._

Nancy paused and thought for a while. She wanted to say something else, but she couldn't think exactly what.

_The lake isn't quite the same without you._

Then she fiercely scribbled out the full stop, and added _and the Swallows_ in a firm hand.

_The lake isn't quite the same without you and the Swallows._

That was a mess. She deliberately shook her pen and smeared ink in a great blot next to the offending sentence. She looked at it again. That was a sappy sentence, whichever way you looked at it. She was an Amazon pirate. Ridiculous. She judiciously made further use of her already leaking pen nib. The line was now completely obliterated, and ink had soaked through onto her French primer. She rummaged in her bag for some blotting paper. Miss Potts was glaring at her. She held up her pen apologetically, and Miss Potts scowled and returned to her marking.

_Sorry about the mess _[she wrote now]_; my pen seems to be leaking a bit. _

That was much better.

_I wish I could send this by pigeon post, but native post will have to do. I must do some French now, or Mdme. Pamplemousse will give me detention AS WELL as Miss Potts and Miss Clark._

_I hope you are well,_

_Nancy Blackett_

She folded the letter up and stuffed it in her bag. And then, stifling a sigh under the watchful gaze of Miss Potts, she pulled her French primer towards her again and set her mind finally to the conjugation of _faire_.

Three days later, and a hundred miles away, John saw the familiar upper-case scrawl on the battered envelope thrown in his general direction by Mr Lancaster, the assistant house master, and his first thought was to hide the letter immediately. God, if they found out he'd been getting letters from a _girl_…! But to hide it now would have brought him even more attention. So he left it, unopened, on the table as he shovelled down his porridge.

God, why was he _blushing?_ He lowered his head over his bowl, and shovelled faster.

'What's the matter, Walker?' That was Taylor, beady eyes behind his spectacles missing nothing.

'Nothing. Shut up, Taylor.'

'Who's the letter from, Walker?'

'I said shut up.'

Now other boys had stopped talking and were listening keenly.

'From your girlfriend, Walker?'

This was intolerable. He was a prefect, and he didn't have to stand for this sort of thing from that little idiot Taylor. John stood up, yanked Taylor's head up by his curly hair, and then forced his face down into his bowl of porridge. Boys laughed and shouted encouragement. The masters at the high table barely looked up from their toast and the _Daily Telegraph_.

'From my sister,' he said. 'Actually. Now shut up and eat your breakfast.'

He left Taylor dripping porridge, and strode back to his room to read Nancy's letter in peace.

Girlfriend indeed. Ridiculous! Next time he'd box Taylor's damned ears.

_Dear Nancy,_

_Thank you for your letter. We score both tries and goals in rugger: a try is touching the ball down beyond the try-line, and a goal is hoofing the ball between the posts. I scored a try or two yesterday, but the other chaps had set me up so I can't claim any glory. Knocking someone's tooth out is rather impressive though. Do you really have a mistress called Madame Pamplemousse? Our worst one is called Mr Bull and he teaches algebra, which I'm meant to be good at. Mr Bull likes to charge around like anything, and he blows through his nose a lot, so I suppose he is well named._

_School is fine and I am well. My sisters have written to me and have sent you and Peggy their love. Roger says that all the copper from the mine is really his as he found it, but I have told him that he is a lazy little beast and deserves nothing. _

_I do hope we are going north for Christmas. I think about sailing every day. It will be interesting to see the mine again. _

_Yours,_

_John Walker_

John read his letter through during evening prep. Crikey, what a bore he sounded! He was no good at all at writing. Oh God, and it sounded as if he were boasting with that try business! And condescending with the tooth thing. Gosh, why was writing so difficult? He felt himself blushing again as he imagined Nancy rolling her eyes as she read it. Gosh, what if she read bits of it out to her friends, his clumsy words read aloud in her clear, penetrating voice? Horrible thought!

No. No. Nancy would not do that. Why had he even begun to think that she would? Idiot. But, oh, to be thought _dull_ by Nancy!

A gang of third form boys was screeching in the corridor. John got up and yelled at them to be quiet, and then slammed the door to his room so hard that dust drifted down from the ceiling. That was better. Returning to his desk, he looked at his letter again. He took up his pen, and added a postscript quickly, before he could think too much about it:

_P.S. I rather wish I could talk to you rather than write to you. I've always been useless at writing, I'm afraid. I'm sorry if the above seems dull, but the truth is nothing much seems to happen without you around._

That looked terrible. John, blushing worse than ever although nobody could see him, added another hurried postscript:

_P.P.S. I shall buy you a new pen when we're next allowed into town._

Perspiring with completely unwarranted embarrassment, he folded the letter, addressed an envelope, and yelled for young Foster to come and take it to the post-box.

'And if you read it,' he told Foster, savagely, 'I'll knock your block off, do you hear?'

Foster, startled almost more than he could bear by this show of fierceness from his normally mild-mannered idol, trotted obediently to the post-box by the gates and popped the letter, unread, in the slot.

And John, horribly flustered by the sudden vision that had slid into his mind of Nancy muddied, sweating, and panting on the hockey field – a perfectly ordinary image that was now, somehow, causing his blood to flow faster and his heart to beat harder – sat back down at his desk and applied himself resolutely to his algebra.

[A/N: My knowledge of hockey is limited, so I apologise if I've made any daft errors, especially to constantlearner (who I know takes a different approach to Nancy's relationship with hockey). I guessed that knocking someone's tooth out with a hockey stick was a detentionable offence, though.]


End file.
